Hi
Firstly, this software looks great! I am just about to implement DHPOS at a new shop Im about to open. It will be run on two tills, networked. So I am in the process of testing all the features of DHPOS.
At the moment, the main things that concern me are: -
- In the Sales Screen, there is noway of adding a new product, say if there is a big cue waiting to be served and a customer picks up an item that apparently is not on the system but it has the price label on it.
How would the user manually enter the price? Maybe can add the item later.
- E.g. If the shop sells penny pick n mix sweets (no barcode) how would you input these on the system? Is the only option to create a barcode?
- What would be the most stable platform for DHPOS? DOS or Windows 98? Because I know someone who is used a DOS based EPOS application in MS-Dos and it was crashing now and then. But when he moved the system onto a Windows 98 platform, its much more reliable. Will this be the case with DHPOS?
- Finally why is the software restricted to storing 13000 items? Is it not possible to increase this?
Gota say the software is excellent!
Any help greatly appreciated!
Thanks
New Item in Sales Screen
Moderators:daleadmin, Dale Harris, Alan, Andrew
To your first two questions:
I think that somewhere in the user manual, Dale wrote that you might consider creating an item with an easy to remember number (like 999), with the name of Misc. Set the price to 0.00. When ever you enter that item into a sale, it will ask you for a price.
For your second question, you could do the same thing again. Make an item with an easy to remember number, with the price set to 0.01. Then, just enter the number of pieces of candy they bought (assuming they didn't get over 999 pieces). You could always start charging by the pound (weight), and get a scale that outputs barcodes with the price.
And for your 4th question, Dale put a resiriction on the items to make it faster. He has an FAQ about it on the main site, here
I think that somewhere in the user manual, Dale wrote that you might consider creating an item with an easy to remember number (like 999), with the name of Misc. Set the price to 0.00. When ever you enter that item into a sale, it will ask you for a price.
For your second question, you could do the same thing again. Make an item with an easy to remember number, with the price set to 0.01. Then, just enter the number of pieces of candy they bought (assuming they didn't get over 999 pieces). You could always start charging by the pound (weight), and get a scale that outputs barcodes with the price.
And for your 4th question, Dale put a resiriction on the items to make it faster. He has an FAQ about it on the main site, here
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Guest
1) You can setup a miscellaneous item in your stock table as Grant mentioned, but you must enable the option to allow price changes in POSCONFG.
If you allow every employee to willy nilly add items to the stock table from the sales screen - things could get very messy in your stock table.
I've worked in several large stores and all their systems didn't allow employees to add to the stock table, items had to be added from the office and would take a few minutes for the changes to propogate across the network. It was possible, in most stores, to use a General Department button to choose a department, and enter a price to ring up a generic item.
2) It's entirely dependant on what EPOS system your running and how stable the PC is normally. DOS, 3.11, 95 or 98 are our recommended choices. As the later versions only emulate DOS and such programs tend to be less stable on the newer OS'.
3) The system is limited to 13,000 for programming memory issues. DHPOS is written in a DOS programming language known as QBASIC. QBASIC has limited access to such functions as serial ports, USB, memory etc.
This is why new features, options, screens, text etc are put through Dale's triage process. It is absolutely incredible that he has managed to fit so much into a program with the limited resources allocated to QBASIC programs. Anything new must be carefully considered before it is given the go-ahead.
We originally had a 5000 item limit, 13000 ought to be enough for almost any store or business using a free POS program. As has been mentioned before, if you carry more than 13000 lines of stock - surely you must be able to afford a paid POS system.
Grant pretty much answered everything, I just filled it out a bit.
Andrew Bunn @ work and forgot to login
If you allow every employee to willy nilly add items to the stock table from the sales screen - things could get very messy in your stock table.
I've worked in several large stores and all their systems didn't allow employees to add to the stock table, items had to be added from the office and would take a few minutes for the changes to propogate across the network. It was possible, in most stores, to use a General Department button to choose a department, and enter a price to ring up a generic item.
2) It's entirely dependant on what EPOS system your running and how stable the PC is normally. DOS, 3.11, 95 or 98 are our recommended choices. As the later versions only emulate DOS and such programs tend to be less stable on the newer OS'.
3) The system is limited to 13,000 for programming memory issues. DHPOS is written in a DOS programming language known as QBASIC. QBASIC has limited access to such functions as serial ports, USB, memory etc.
This is why new features, options, screens, text etc are put through Dale's triage process. It is absolutely incredible that he has managed to fit so much into a program with the limited resources allocated to QBASIC programs. Anything new must be carefully considered before it is given the go-ahead.
We originally had a 5000 item limit, 13000 ought to be enough for almost any store or business using a free POS program. As has been mentioned before, if you carry more than 13000 lines of stock - surely you must be able to afford a paid POS system.
Grant pretty much answered everything, I just filled it out a bit.
Andrew Bunn @ work and forgot to login
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Dale Harris
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Stuff
Zed,
You really do not want to let your sales people create a new item in your stock table. At a minimum they would have to give the new item a new stock number, a price, and assign a rate from the tax chart. What are the odds that they would get all 3 correct? If <u>they</u> assign the stock number how do you know that the next time someone brings it up to the register that it will be rung up under the same stock number, or will they create another line in the stock table for the same item? Soon items in your store will be rung up under 27 different stock numbers for the same item.
So it must be left up to the store management to add new items to the stock table so that they can make sure that they get the stock number, price, and tax rate correct. It would also be cool if they got the description, cost, inventory, and all the rest correct too.
For emergencies you could have a "miscellaneous" line in your stock table to ring up stuff that cannot be found in the stock table. Give it an easy to remember stock number (like 1 ), a description of "miscellaneous", a price of 0.00, and assign the general merchandise tax rate.
The POS program will run under all versions of DOS from 2.11 onward and all version of Windows (except CE apparently) with no problems. However if I had to choose I would run DHPOS under Windows '95 - '98, then DOS, then later versions of Windows.
As pointed out by others the 13,000 line limit in the stock table is a DOS memory think. I could rewrite the program for unlimited lines in the stock table but then it would run slower even with 13,000 or less items and would run slower and slower as you went past 13,000. Plus, as was also pointed out, if someone has more that 13,000 different items in their store (with some exceptions like a hardware or bookstore) then your business is large enough to purchase commercial POS software. I am not trying to save Wal-mart money, they have plenty, they should spend some.
Glad you like the program.
You really do not want to let your sales people create a new item in your stock table. At a minimum they would have to give the new item a new stock number, a price, and assign a rate from the tax chart. What are the odds that they would get all 3 correct? If <u>they</u> assign the stock number how do you know that the next time someone brings it up to the register that it will be rung up under the same stock number, or will they create another line in the stock table for the same item? Soon items in your store will be rung up under 27 different stock numbers for the same item.
So it must be left up to the store management to add new items to the stock table so that they can make sure that they get the stock number, price, and tax rate correct. It would also be cool if they got the description, cost, inventory, and all the rest correct too.
For emergencies you could have a "miscellaneous" line in your stock table to ring up stuff that cannot be found in the stock table. Give it an easy to remember stock number (like 1 ), a description of "miscellaneous", a price of 0.00, and assign the general merchandise tax rate.
The POS program will run under all versions of DOS from 2.11 onward and all version of Windows (except CE apparently) with no problems. However if I had to choose I would run DHPOS under Windows '95 - '98, then DOS, then later versions of Windows.
As pointed out by others the 13,000 line limit in the stock table is a DOS memory think. I could rewrite the program for unlimited lines in the stock table but then it would run slower even with 13,000 or less items and would run slower and slower as you went past 13,000. Plus, as was also pointed out, if someone has more that 13,000 different items in their store (with some exceptions like a hardware or bookstore) then your business is large enough to purchase commercial POS software. I am not trying to save Wal-mart money, they have plenty, they should spend some.
Glad you like the program.
Dale
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Guest
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Guest
Import & Export Inventory?
Thanks alot guys! That cleared up alot of things. Really appreciate it!
Another thing I was curious about was, how easy or hard is it to export or import the inventory from another EPOS?
Because I can certainly see alot of people I know who have paid for a EPOS system who aint getting what they paid for and will want to convert to DHPOS!
Is it possible to import from a .csv file?
Thanks Again.
Another thing I was curious about was, how easy or hard is it to export or import the inventory from another EPOS?
Because I can certainly see alot of people I know who have paid for a EPOS system who aint getting what they paid for and will want to convert to DHPOS!
Is it possible to import from a .csv file?
Thanks Again.
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Dale Harris
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Dan
Sundry / Misc. Items
You can set the till up so that the first 20 or so items can be accessed by using the letters A, B, C, etc rather than the stock code.
I have set up so that the most common items can be accessed in this way. For example, a photo developing deposit is the 4th item on the list, so can be accessed just by pressing D. Payment for processing is P - which brings up a price of "0" so can then be changed to the appropriate price. S brings up "sundry", which is used when there is an item not in the table.
Would this work for you?
Dan
I have set up so that the most common items can be accessed in this way. For example, a photo developing deposit is the 4th item on the list, so can be accessed just by pressing D. Payment for processing is P - which brings up a price of "0" so can then be changed to the appropriate price. S brings up "sundry", which is used when there is an item not in the table.
Would this work for you?
Dan
Yeah I guess that will be helpful to me to a certain extent.
Think I might use that for the special offers in the shop,
e.g. 5 Cans of Stella for the price of 4.
Not really got round to reading the manual properly but is there a way of entering special offers, so say customer picks up 3 cans of something and there is an offer on them, buy 2 get 1 free. Is there a way of automatically discounting the 3rd can when scanned?
Think I might use that for the special offers in the shop,
e.g. 5 Cans of Stella for the price of 4.
Not really got round to reading the manual properly but is there a way of entering special offers, so say customer picks up 3 cans of something and there is an offer on them, buy 2 get 1 free. Is there a way of automatically discounting the 3rd can when scanned?
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